Fun with Word Clouds

Writers like words. At least, I hope we all do. So, just for fun, I plugged my work in progress (Ivy's novel Roses and Mirrors) into Wordle. It generated this word cloud:

It's not as cool as I thought it would be, but I'm very pleased that 'Beast' and 'Beauty' are prominent. I really need to go back and look at how many times I use the word 'like', though.

I'd much rather it come out like this:

What clouds can you come up with?

Update: my friend Ryan made his own word clouds and posted them on his website here.

Revision Part 4

This week, I'm giving you more links and advice on revision. I've covered this topic before in a three-part series. Here's a link to Part 1 of Revising.

But these are new links--so much better than the ones posted way back in December. (Okay, maybe not. You be the judge.)

I'll start off with the YA Highway's Survivor's Guide to Revisions: A step-by-step process for taking your manuscript apart and putting it back together.

Then there are the Dames. They've provided a great checklist for your manuscript. This is a great post if you *think* it's ready to send out into the world.
Also, one of the dames gives her personal take on revision with some interesting humor--how revision is like being in a cave.

Finally, when all is said and done, you think you're ready to submit. You research agents and *carefully* read their submission guidelines only to discover that your novel isn't the right word length! (Oh no!)

You can get advice from all over the place, telling you how long your book should be. But very few explain the why. Here are the Economics of Word Count by Lucienne Diver.

Tools for Tracking Your Word Counts

I've posted these before, but I thought they were worth sharing again.

Using the NaNoWriMo Report Card by Eric Benson, I adapted a spreadsheet that will track your word count goals and progress. This is a helpful motivation tool, especially if you're goal-oriented or like a visual representation of your progress.Click Here to Download.

Cameron Matthews has a much more high-tech version, found here.

Most Productive Day. Ever.

Sometimes, the Muse sings. Sometimes, you have a really good work day and you get a lot done. Sometimes they both happen at once and you get a massive amount of genius. Yeah, I don't mean to brag, but today was a massive amount of genius.

As I edited my first draft today, I found that a few scenes were missing. So I added those. I typed up the pages I had marked from my hard copy pass, too. Overall, I edited 36 pages of manuscript and added nearly 4,200 words to the original work!
Thanks to Liquid Story Binder, I know that it took me all of six hours of actual work to do it.

I have never written that many words in one day before. Ever. Not in first drafts, not during NaNoWriMo. 4,200 words is a lot. To put it in perspective, if I wrote this many words every day, I could finish a novel in 12 days.

So, bear with me as I bask in my own glory. **sigh** ;)


**Just a side note, I'm not that into myself. It's supposed to be funny

Track Your Progress As You Write

Using the NaNoWriMo Report Card by Eric Benson, I adapted a spreadsheet that will track your word count goals and progress. This is a helpful motivation tool, especially if you're goal-oriented or like a visual representation of your progress.
Click Here to Download.
Cameron Matthews has a much more high-tech version, found here.

How I Created A Much Better Villain

I made up all my lost words yesterday, and though I'm a day behind schedule, I must say I’m very pleased. The conflict is much tighter and my villain's motivation is much clearer.

This guy is more sympathetic, and yet more abominable than he could have been if I had done it the way I had planned. There’s a lot more tension, too.

Rachel’s doing some crazy stuff to protect the people she loves, which will help me with my ending. Her main concern is Nathan at this point, but we’ve seen that she cares deeply for her mother's safety (and her mom’s boyfriend) as well. She’s not always acting logically, but she’s acting valiantly and is learning from her mistakes.

This is very exciting. I can’t wait to see the finished product!


Side Note: I once asked 'What makes a Villain a Villain?'. My favorite answer came from Raquelle who said: "the best villain is one who convinces others that he is no villain at all."

Pay Attention to ALL Your Characters

I just deleted over 2,000 words. Why would I do this when I’m having trouble getting enough words as it is? Because I messed up. Big time.

You see, when I get started writing, I just go with it. I get in the head of my POV character and I fly. It usually works out. I know the general direction the story needs to take and I have a (albeit vague) idea of what I want to accomplish in each scene (in my defense, I go back and make the scene tighter). My muse likes freedom and when I give it to her, I’m usually rewarded with some neat twists that I hadn't been expecting.

But there are some minuses. Aside from the aforementioned wandering that I sometimes catch myself doing, I don't frequently get in the heads of my other characters. I figure out each character at the beginning--discover their motives, needs, personality--but rarely do I stop and think, "How wil so-in-so react to this?"

And today it cost me 2,000 words and about 2 hours of writing and planning. Maybe more. Chapter 12 has been demolished and I’m having to start from ground zero. All because I didn’t use my villain to his full potential. He was being way too nice, only attacking when convenient and never really threatening anyone, just trying to be scary.

Now, he has an army waiting outside my heroine's home, ready to attack her mom as soon as she steps over the protective threshold of her home. And she won’t even see it coming.

For a brief synopsis, see my earlier post: My Current Project

A Problem and a Challenging Solution

Okay, so I've got an interesting problem to deal with. I'm almost done with my first draft. I've got two very short scenes, one really long scene (the final battle!) and then another quick one to wrap it up. Only problem is, this was supposed to be a 60,000-word novel and I'm only at 32k!

A little tip for other writers: filler is bad. I don't want to use filler.

So what do I do?

Fortunately, I've already planned to go back and insert entire chapters from Nathan (my hero's) point of view. This will add depth to my love story, a new voice, maybe a little history (because he is a ghost after all), and we can see the heroine from another perspective.

(I expect the unexpected to happen when I do this. My muse likes the throw some cool stuff on the page when I do stuff like this. )

And then I'll add a romance for poor Lisa, who has desperately wanted a boyfriend since chapter 1.

I'll also rewrite some of my current scenes from his perspective and see which is better. Then, I'll go back to the beginning and add rich detail, a LOT more conflict (I've decided life's been way too easy for Rachel), and a ton of showing (vs. telling).

I should get my words in, but this is going to take a lot of planning.

First of all, when I finish the first draft I'm taking a break! Maybe two weeks. I'll work on my phantom project, maybe catch up on my reading, stuff like that. Then I'll go through what I have and write out what I'm hoping to get out of each scene. What do I want to tell the reader? How do I show it instead? What's the conflict? What could make it worse? How would EACH character (present or not) react? What are my characters seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking, doing, and saying? What do they want to hide from the other characters? What other motivation might they have?
etc...

Yeah, it's a long process, but the product that comes from it is more than worth it!
Then, I read through a hard copy of my book, writing in comments, suggestions, thoughts, and nit-picky edits. THEN I go through a soft copy and actually MAKE all those edits. (By now I'll be exhausted.)

I'd like to get all of this done by October 1st. (I know, good luck, right?) That way I'll have a full month to plan my phantom project in time for NaNoWriMo.

Think I can do it?

We'll see.

By the way, the Writing Tip of the Day is:
Never resist editing, because your writing isn't etched in stone and can always be improved for the reader.

How appropriate.